Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/66



agitating the social organism. * * * The novelists were occupied in constructing a most elaborate panorama of the manners and customs of their own times with a minuteness and psychological analysis not known to their predecessors. Their work is, of course, an implicit criticism of life."

With all the encouragement bestowed upon them the Victorian novelists could indeed do no less than live up to their opportunities. Not ad astra per aspera lay their destiny. Nothing more was asked of them than to refrain from burying their talents, and to this admonition they were zealously obedient.

The writers themselves supply striking inductive data as to the general diffusion both of fiction and satire. A list of the dozen most prominent Victorian novelists shows that no one of them was wholly devoid of interest in public affairs, and none was entirely lacking in the satiric touch. On the other hand, every one of them saw more on his horizon than current events, and all were something more than mere critics or humorists or even both.

They were themselves of the Victorian Age. Each one might say Pars fui, if not magna. None therefore had a detached point of view, nor a long perspective. But though their vision was microscopic rather than telescopic, it was searching and enthusiastic, and the report it made was honest if not always dispassionate. It could hardly be otherwise for those who were alive and awake at a time when new information was creating new ideas, and these in turn were becoming dynamic in new movements, political, religious, educational, social. All these things were too tremendous and important to be taken otherwise than seriously. The dominant feeling was grave and earnest, as one of its interpreters has said: